The Delectable Mountains

by Michael Malone

  Pete Barney played the opening notes of Dragnet. “Dum De DUM dum,” he sang.

  Furious, I grabbed his arm. “Damn it, I mean it!”

  “Sure,” Ronny guffawed, holding his stomach.

  Seymour peered down the dark theater aisle. Then jerking up, he dropped the fan as if it were on fire, ripped the wig from his hair, snatched his shirt from the floor and held it in front of his chest. “Oh, no,” he moaned under his breath. Light from the open door caught the swirling rings of white cigar smoke.

  “I’d like to speak to Joely Finn, if he’s back there. Is he?” Stark’s voice echoed down the huge empty room.

  Margery stood up, her beer bottle behind her back. “He’s in the scene shop.”

  “Hello, Margery. Send him out here, please,” Stark said. The door swung shut.

  Seymour, his face pasty with quick sobriety, pulled on his shirt and stepped out of the spangled gown. Then he sank to the floor beside Ronny. “Holy shit,” he shook his head. “This is it.”

  “I’ll get Joely,” Marlin said sadly. He went backstage.

  “You know Stark?” I asked Margery, who was picking up beer bottles and paper plates, dropping them into a waste can.

  “Sure, we all met him last summer. He flew down for a day so he could point out to Mittie that he didn’t know how to run a business. Scared the shit out of everybody.”

  “Why?” I asked. Did he think we had murdered his son?

  “Boy, we’ve blown it now.” Seymour kept shaking his head. He kicked out at the ostrich plumes.

  Followed by Marlin and by Sabby, who was biting her fingernails, Joely hurried from the wings down the stage steps. “Donahue,” he called, and I went over. Pulling me along with him by the arm, he spoke rapidly, “Go next door to the bar; call home. If Leila’s not back…”

  “How could she have even gotten…”

  “Tell her mother that Bruno Stark is here. Tell her, well, she’ll know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Where are the kids?” he snapped.

  “Leila took them with her,” Sabby whispered.

  “Okay. Then, Devin, you get over there and see what you can do about Spurgeon.”

  “And what would that be?” I asked, jerking my arm away.

  “Think of something,” he growled, throwing open the door to the lobby where Stark stood giving instructions to Mr. Edmunds or Edgars: “Tell Gurley to stay with the copter ’til I get back. And get me a car. Then get us three rooms, wherever looks best.”

  The employee jerked his head down in acknowledgment of each command, then, dismissed, slid noiselessly away.

  “Mr. Stark. Hello,” Joely offered his hand. “This is a surprise.”

  Stark shook the hand perfunctorily. “So it appears,” he replied.

  Slumped in a dark corner booth of the Red Lagoon Bar, Wolfstein gazed dreamily at a glass of bourbon. His short-sleeved shirt was sweated flat against his breast, his bony arms dangled loosely out of the wide openings of the sleeves. “Nate,” I nudged him. “Nate. Are you going to be here long?”

  “World without end,” he slurred softly, not looking up.

  “What I was wondering was, could I take the Austin back to the house for a little while? Bruno Stark’s here. Mittie’s father. He just showed up. Everybody seems to be kind of panicked. Leila’s not here.”

  Wolfstein appeared totally uninterested in my news. After a pause, he said, “Herr Vater. The Boss, huh? Pay up the mortgage. Out onto the ice.” He twirled the ice cubes in his glass. “Devin,” he asked, staring into the spinning bourbon, “you think the truth is in here?”

  I hesitated, then decided to say it, “Well, I think one truth is…you’re hurting yourself.”

  “Hah.” He glanced up at me with blurred eyes. “What do you know about truth anyway? Punk kid.”

  I looked down at the floor.

  Then he slid the car keys across the spilt liquor on the table.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, embarrassed. “I’ll bring the car back here.”

  “All the time in eternity,” he whispered to his drink.

  At the bar’s pay phone, I called our house. It rang eleven times before she answered. “Stark residence, Mrs. Amanda Thurston speaking.”

  “Mrs. Thurston?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “This is Devin.” I could hear the rumble of a motor and the clack of a typewriter.

  “What? Devin? Just a moment. It’s simply impossible to speak under these conditions.”

  “Mrs. Thurston…” But she put the receiver down. I heard footsteps receding. A click. More footsteps. Another click. The noise was silenced.

  “I’m sorry, Devin, but I had to come in here to Leila’s bedroom in order to hear you. I was vacuuming and that is why I didn’t hear the phone ringing at first. Of course, that man was sitting right beside it in the kitchen typing at his fool machine, but naturally one can’t expect miracles, like Spurgeon’s pausing one simple moment to pick up a receiver four inches from his elbow.”

  “Mrs. Thurston, Leila’s not back, is she?”

  “Why no, she left only an hour or so ago.”

  “Mrs. Thurston, Mr. Stark is here.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Stark?”

  “Bruno Stark.”

  “Devin! How can that be?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s here at the theater, and he wants to see Leila.”

  “My Lord above! Where is Leila’s head? She did not give me a single word of warning about this. Bruno Stark! And Emily?”

  “No, ma’am. He landed in a helicopter in the parking lot with two of his employees. They’re inspecting the whole theater now. I don’t think Leila knew they were coming.”

  “Well, good heavens, I shouldn’t imagine she did! Oh, dear Lord, and she is going to walk into this house wearing that skimpy little foreign shirt and nothing else, and half of her entire body fully exposed to every wind that blows. Devin, I am going to try to have that child paged at the bus terminal.”

  “Wait, Mrs. Thurston. Mr. Stark is coming over there.”

  “Here? Now?” she inhaled.

  “Yes, ma’am, pretty soon, I think. So is Spurgeon there?”

  She groaned.

  “Is there anything you can do? Joely doesn’t think it’s such a good idea for Mr. Stark to run into him.”

  “Well, I don’t need Joely Finn to tell me that. Of course, you don’t suppose I can physically pry that man loose from his typewriter, which is what it will probably require, do you?”

  “No, ma’am, I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “And Devin, honey, bring the floor-buffer with you.” She hung up.

  Someone was tapping at the glass of the phone booth. Tanya. She ran a red fingernail slowly down the pane. Replacing the receiver, I tugged the door open and sidled out. Damn it. Why now, when I had to go?

  “Hello, Devin Donahue,” she said, shaking her hair back from her face, brandishing the curve of her neck at me. “Where have you been?” She pushed two fingers through openings in my shirt; squeezing them together, she undid a button. “I thought we were going to get together.”

  “We are,” I said, sucking in my stomach as I stepped back. “Can we have a drink tonight? Around ten? Here? I gotta go.”

  “You scared of me?” she smiled.

  “Nope,” I smiled too. “I just have to go.”

  She flicked my chin with her forefinger. “Okay,” she said.

  Outside the bar, I noticed that Sheriff Booter was standing with his deputy across from the shooting gallery in the arcade talking to those three old Mexican women of Leila’s who sold flowers in the streets during the summer. The old ladies were chattering and gesturing frenetically at the stolid Booter while his gum-chewing assistant packed their tin cans of flowers into cardb
oard boxes and shoved them into an open patrol car parked at the curb.

  I drove home to find Mrs. Thurston, who had conceded neither stockings nor dress to the heat, spraying the house with an aerosol can. “Don’t walk on the floor,” she warned. “Where’s the buffer?”

  “I couldn’t get it,” I apologized.

  Patting her forehead with the handkerchief she kept stuffed in her sleeve, she pursed her lips; her nostrils tightened. “You know, there is a peculiar odor in this house, Devin. I am not familiar with it, but I was not born yesterday, and I am practically convinced that that Spurgeon is smoking marijuana cigarettes here on these premises.”

  Somebody was, at any rate. She released another gust of pine scent at the ceiling. Then thrusting a bucket of ammonia at me, she proposed, “Now, honey, you could be a real help in this situation if you wouldn’t mind washing down these few front windows.”

  The fumes made me gag, teared my eyes, but I splashed a clearing through the glass mist as Mrs. Thurston, beside me, began waxing the woodwork. Already, a bright veneer of order glistened throughout the house. On the tables, vases of roses and marigolds. On the mantel, portraits of Mittie and Leila, Mittie and the children. Between them the remaining pink glass globe, the one Mittie hadn’t shot.

  Ten minutes later, Spur came out of the bathroom, zipping up his fly. He wore a tank top stamped with the Vietcong flag. His hair was pulled back in a red rubber band. At the sight, Mrs. Thurston’s face tensed. She held him at arm’s length with her aerosol can. “Spurgeon, I am going to be mopping the kitchen floor, and I hope you will take this opportunity to get outside and get yourself a breath of fresh air. Sitting around like this all day is not good for your health.”

  He lifted his shirt, scratched the hair on his stomach. “Lady,” he said, “would you say Nietzsche was sitting around all day? Was John Brown sitting around at Harper’s Ferry? Do you think I’m sitting around all day? Wow, man! I’m starting a revolution! Do you think I care about my health?”

  “Well, I’m sure that’s very nice, Spurgeon, but the floor has to be mopped.”

  “FAR OUT! She thinks you can wash away BLOOD with a MOP! Listen, chick,” he stabbed her with his finger, “your values are screwed, I mean, fucked up! Look at this can!” He grabbed it from her, threw it in the fireplace. “Junk! Plastic poison! Plastic food! Coffee! Cleaning! WOW! You need to get your ass loosened, lady.”

  Mrs. Thurston’s cheeks flushed, she drew herself together, adding three inches to her dignity. “Young man,” she replied with slow precision, “I will, not, honor, that vile, remark with a reply, except to say, that you belong, in an insane asylum, where you could receive some professional, help. Or, in a, prison, for the protection, of others.” Having retrieved her can, she marched to the kitchen.

  “Hey, Spur. Hey, Spur,” I dangled my voice before him. It caught his attention. “Hey, look, I wanted to ask you if you wanted to come down and take a look at something with me. It really sort of sums up the whole military industrial complex of this, you know, this stupid junkpile country.” He was listening. “The cops—uh, the pigs—are busting some old elderly Mexican ladies down at the arcade. Busting them! And why? Why? Can you believe this? For selling flowers!”

  I had him. His eyes whitened; he was visibly salivating. “Rich. Rich. Heavy. WOW!” He threw his hands up in laughter. “Oh, wow. I can use it, man, I can USE it. It’s perfect.”

  “I’m going back now,” I urged.

  “Yeah,” he crooned. “Wheels?”

  “Sure,” I reeled him in. “I’ve got Wolfstein’s sports car.”

  “That Nazi death trap?” he balked. For a minute I thought I’d lost him, but he stopped only to stuff a spice jar and a red packet of cigarette papers in his blue-jeans pocket, then grabbed up a legal pad and ran past me out the door.

  Quickly I sprinted to the kitchen. “We’re going,” I told Mrs. Thurston, who was on the floor sudsing with two scrub brushes. She jumped to her feet and crammed Spur’s typewriter into its case. “Thank the Good Lord, and thank you, honey. Now, I could not reach Leila at the terminal, where the switchboard girl was, frankly, rude to me over the telephone. So we will just have to Hope for the Best.” Handing me the case, she pushed me out to the porch, where she fell to her knees and ripped the blanket from Spur’s cot.

  While I drove him down to the arcade, Spurgeon excommunicated Wolfstein’s car in his grandest style. Of course, he was just revving up his larynx. Noticing the helicopter in the parking lot as we pulled in, he screamed at it, shaking the dashboard with both hands like a hysterical chimpanzee, “Will you LOOK at that? Bastards! The pigs have brought in the fucking National Guard! They’re going to BAZOOKA those downtrodden women! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING YOU!” he yelled out the window at a man who was leaning up against the side of the helicopter, flipping through a magazine.

  Jumping out before I could stop the car, Spur raced past the bar, up the arcade lane, where three of the elderly flower-sellers still stood. The police were gone, so were the flowers. As he flew toward them yelling, “Fascists! Murderers!” the women shrieked, threw up their arms, threw off their shawls, and scampered up the lane in the opposite direction. They flapped around a corner, and Spur sped after them.

  I parked the car. “What’s going on?” the man, who I figured must be the copter pilot, called over to me.

  “He’s writing a play,” I yelled.

  “Oh,” he shrugged, and went back to his magazine.

  • • •

  I stood at the door and squinted down into the dark theater. Around a table set up on the stage, Joely handed ledger books to Mr. Stark. Mr. Edgars and Mr. Edmunds were bent over other books, their ties loosened, flicking their hands across their noses at the flies that were buzzing around them in the sticky air. Their tongues twitched from side to side to catch the sweat gathering at the corners of their mouths. I started to close the door again when Stark looked up.

  “What’s his name?” he asked Joely.

  “Devin Donahue.”

  “Ah, Devin,” he called out. My hand started to sweat, slid on the doorknob. “I wonder if you would mind doing me a favor.”

  “Glad to.”

  “I’d like you to go next door and tell Mr. Menelade that I want to speak with him for a moment.”

  “Sure.” The Menelades, I had learned, owned the Red Lagoon Theatre as well as the bar, and so it was from Tony (or Lady Red, rather) that Mittie had leased the property. The lease was in his and Leila’s names, but of course Bruno Stark was paying the rent.

  “And Devin, I’d like to speak with you as well, sometime this evening. I hope that will be agreeable.” Assuming it would be, he lowered his head back to the books, and so Edmunds and Edgars, who had been staring at me while he spoke, their mouths open like dogs breathing in hot air, lowered their heads with him.

  I didn’t want to do it. Why should I have to explain myself to him? I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t go home because that home was making itself ready for Stark. And it wasn’t my home anyhow. Fitzgerald was going to my home.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, pulling the door closed behind me.

  Back at the bar, I found Tony Menelade in front of his little television set, crouched in his shirt-sleeves, wiping the back of his neck with a dishtowel. Near him, at the cash register, his wife pushed nickels into paper rolls. I leaned across the counter to tap him. “Excuse me, Tony, Bruno Stark is next door—Mittie’s father. He’d like to speak with you—something about the theater—if you have a minute.”

  “Shit,” Tony said without moving; he was watching Truth or Consequences.

  “Put your jacket on.” Mrs. Menelade tossed it at him.

  “Aw, come on, Red, it’s sweltering,” he grimaced.

  “You want him to think you’re a slob?” Annoyance snarled out of her face.

  “What do I care?” Tony
sulked, pulling on the jacket.

  She packed the rolls of change into drawers, closed and locked them. “What do you care? Let me get this through your head: I’d like to sell this dump. I’d like to go someplace for once in my life. And this guy may want to buy it. You see that? So we’re both going over there now, and we’re going to make a good impression on this Mr. Stark.” The words were like twists of his arm behind his back.

  “Kim,” she called to the big, dough-white dancer who sat near the jukebox, frowning as she read some kind of movie magazine. “Watch the register for a few minutes.” Kim slowly pulled herself up out of her chair, dragged herself over to the bar. Lady Red took her purse from under the counter and left with it for the bathroom.

  “Stark’s up on the stage,” I told Tony. I looked around for Tanya, but she wasn’t there.

  Passing Wolfstein fogged in vapors of smoke, I raised my hand to him, gesturing greetings; he didn’t notice me. Once outside again, I stood, irresolutely, in front of the door. To go back to the theater now was awful. Stark’s capacity to intimidate was awful. What right had he to such assurance, what right to frighten us by his authority? But then he must have loved his only son. So that excused it. But Verl said that while not loving enough is always wrong, loving too much is not always right. He said this was true because we can warp love to fit us. I thought about this. Stark must find it inexplicable that his plans could be so violated, so carelessly set aside, when he had all that money and all that power to make them work. He should have been able to stop Mittie from dying, from drinking, from failure, from unhappiness. So he had come to learn why. Maybe he would interrogate us all, one by one, until he had found out the reason, had identified and punished the saboteur was Mittie himself, and he had wrenched the shape of his plan. But the saboteur had already slipped through his grasp. And I didn’t want to be questioned about it.

  Lady Red pushed Tony past me; she brushed at the back of his jacket, straightening it as they went into the theater. Crossing the lot finally, I stood at the point on the little bridge where Mittie had jumped into the shallow water, warning us with a burlesque joke. Afternoon was over, the rain had never come, and now the sun, undefeated, began with a grin to set. I strained my eyes open to watch. When it sets, I said, I’ll go in and ask him, “What did you want to talk to me about, Mr. Stark?” When it sets.